1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a fishing reel, and more particularly to a fishing reel mounted on a fishing rod for winding a fishing line around a spool by using a rotor that rotates synchronized with a rotation of a handle.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, a fishing reel has a reel body, a rotor that is rotatably mounted on the reel body, and a spool around which a fishing line is to be wound and which is located in a front side of the rotor. The reel body has a rotor support portion for rotatably supporting the rotor, and a flange portion formed outside the rotor support portion so as to cover a rear end portion of a cylindrical portion. The rotor has the cylindrical portion having a front wall and a pair of arm portions that are formed to oppose each other at sides of the cylindrical portion. A line guide portion that may be pivoted to a line discharge position and closed to a line winding position, is provided between the pair of arm portions. The line guide portion has bail support members pivotally supported on the pair of arm portions, respectively, a line roller rotatably supported at a tip end of one of the bail support members, and a bail for connecting the pair of bail support members.
Furthermore, a oscilating mechanism for winding a fishing line, guided by the bail and the line roller, around an outer periphery of the spool uniformly back and forth is provided for the fishing reel. The oscilating mechanisms are classified generally into ones having an oscillating gear and others having a screw shaft along the spool shaft. In the oscillating gear type oscilating mechanism, a winding density is different between opposite end portions and a central portion of the spool. Often, the winding density at the central portion being low is such that the windings of the fishing line in the central portion form a recess or depression with the windings on the axial ends of the spool being thicker than the central portion. For this reason, the screw shaft type oscilating mechanism that may uniformly wind the fishing line around the spool has recently been used in many cases.
The screw shaft type oscilating mechanism is provided with a screw shaft arranged in parallel with the spool shaft, an intermediate gear for rotating the screw shaft and a slider for sliding moving the screw shaft. The screw shaft is disposed along the spool shaft on, for example, an oblique side of the spool shaft. A crossing spiral groove is formed in an outer circumference of the screw shaft. A part of a slider is engaged with the spiral groove. The intermediate gear is fixed to a tip end of the screw shaft and is to be rotated in synchronized with the handle. The slider is fixed to the rear end of the spool shaft substantially at the same position in the axial direction as that of the engagement portion with the screw shaft. The slider is reciprocatingly moved along the screw shaft so that the spool shaft and the spool are reciprocatingly moved in the same manner. Thus, the spool is reciprocated in accordance with the rotational operation of the handle so that the fishing line is uniformly wound around the outer circumference of the spool.
In such a fishing reel, it is important to make the structure compact in size and light in weight for the purpose of easy casting. However, in the structure having the screw shaft type oscilating mechanism as in the conventional fishing reel, since the screw shaft is located on the oblique side of the spool shaft, a right and left dimension (transverse width) of the reel body is increased, and is usually 50% or more of a diameter of the flange portion. For this reason, it is difficult to make the reel body compact.